


Where Hive Gods Go When They Die

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Touch of Malice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9299864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: “The matrix destroyed, the ritual disrupted … where do you think Hive gods go when they die?” - GhostFollowing the theory that Oryx's soul is joined with the Touch of Malice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Also on Tumblr](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/155772739313/where-hive-gods-go-when-they-die)

“Thank you, it served us well.” The Guardian said. “I made sure to get the killing blow, for you.”

Eris heard but did not hear. Too fixated on the weapon. There was something here, something that should not be.

 _“Why?”_ Her whisper is a breath through the Dreadnaught halls, hundreds of thousands of miles away by ship but hardly a step through the planes.

The Guardian responds, Eris is not listening to them. She is waiting for another.

Fingers drag along the barrel, ugly metal covered in stitched hide. The talisman hanging from the seams brushes her wrist, cold though layers and layers of armor. She wonders as she waits, is the Guardian unnerved by this weapon? It’s malicious nature, it’s ruined core. A dark void wrapped in the folds of their pure Light… It was built for one reason alone. Vengeance.

But she senses a second purpose.

Her hand approaches the knot of causality, wreathed by the rings of the gimble. They spin quicker, agitated, as if to ward off her touch. The reply she has been waiting for seeps through the cracks of the universe at last.

_Mortality._

Her lungs retract, a hiss rises in her throat. She folds to the ground, cradles the gun on her knees and ankles, and commits both hands and all attention to the presence.

 _What infects my touch?_ She demands, fingers darting from rune to rune as the rings spin and spin. Something inside must come out. Her design, her craft, her ritual. There must be no imperfections to such a delicate balance of darkness kept so barely checked.

 _One content to observe._ The response melts over her shoulders, but she feels a tug from the containment. A flash of flickering potential, white hot, then instantly vacuum cold. The chill sets into the crevice of her collarbone, where the Light once was. _Are you certain you wish to release me here? Among your Warriors of Light?_

Her fingers stop, pinch. She takes a shaky breath, feels the Traveler’s warmth at her back.

It had all been too simple, after all. Laid out in a line of causality. The discoveries each led to the next, the plan had unfurled unbidden before her. Steal the essence, pass though the veil. Kill once, corporeal, kill twice, ascendant. She had not woven this fate alone. Oryx’s demise was not a proof of the Sword Logic, but a design. All her certainty was based on a bias fueled by rage. She had not paused to think…

 _Why?_ She asked again, a whimper.

_Reality is finite. To continue my path would be inevitable destruction._

_What do you want from us?_

_You have given it to me already._

The eyes in her skull pulsed, burned. What had they done? What has she not forseen, what had they released?

Had Toland known?

_You have given me… will. Through death I am at last free._

Eris rose, shaky and disturbed. “Oryx is not dead. Do not be complacent.” She shoved the weapon into confused hands and lurched from her corner beneath the stairs, putting physical distance between herself and the shattered source of her certainty.

The Taken King’s voice followed her, and from within his house of malice, he extended an aura of none.

_Thank you._


End file.
